Back to Turkey...

So, I am off to Turkey again. Need to find a real office space... I will head out Monday morning, and get back on May 11th. Just in time for Pole Pedal Paddle!

The Pain...

We have just been told that the Turkish government will not accept my apartment as a place of work. To get our business license, we will need to lease an actual office. So, I think I'll be going to Turkey next week to secure a location. This is turning into quite the royal pain!

So, where are you going?

A lot of people ask where in Turkey I am going. I think most people know where Istanbul is, but that's about it. I am going to Izmir. It is the third largest city (after Istanbul and the capital, Ankara) in Turkey. Located on the Aegean Sea about as far west as you can go on the Asian peninsula. Here is a map:

This is a very cool area. Nice Mediterranean climate, cosmopolitan city, friendly people.
Information from me:
-Why I am going to Turkey
-Pictures of my apartment
-My photos of Ephesus (near Izmir)

Other information:
-CIA World Fact Book entry for Turkey
-History (to 3000 B.C.) of Izmir

End in sight?

I just talked with Pam in HR, and it seems that the branch office documentation should be done by the end of this week and my work permit should be done very quickly after that... Looks like I might have a real date real soon!

Flashback!

One year ago. Finish of Robie Creek. The guy behind me in the red shorts is Michael.



If I have to endure endless "Bill is Slow" comments (long story originating with an Easter Egg), then I'm posting this everywhere I can think of!

Race to Slow Creek

I just returned to Portland from Boise. This is my annual pilgrimage to inflect great pain and suffering on myself with the annual Race to Robie Creek. This year had a couple of hiccups. First off, I was never supposed to go. Remember that Turkey thing? Yeah, I should have been overseas, not here. So, that slightly effected my training. In other words, I went and ran the weekend before the race. I don't think that is quite the formula for success.

The other snafu was we missed Micheal on this run. For those of you that don't know, Micheal is my arch nemesis, well, at least in the running world. Yes, I always run in white and he always runs in black so everyone knows who's good and bad. In my first three attempts at Robie, Micheal beat me. Finally, last year, I beat him. I was feeling good about being 'conveniently' out of the country for this one. Then my slipping move date forced me into the darn thing. I was sure to be schooled by Michel. Unfortunately, Michael's grandmother passed away a week before the race, so he didn't have a change to properly kick my butt. Our thoughts were with the Lauber clan and we lifted a couple of toasts for them.

Race day was also hot. About 75 degrees and pure sun. There is very little shade on the course. Five people were taken by ambulance off the hill with dehydration. As I right this, I have a doosie of a sun burn on my right arm. All in all, tough running conditions.

So, complete lack of training, missing my normal 'rabbit', and near heat stroke give me my personal worst of 2 hours, 6 minuets and 38 seconds. My PR is 1:54, so not too bad considering. Will I make it next year? Will I have moved to Turkey by next year? Time will tell.

Thanks for the Peterson's for the housing, Mark for carpooling, Lee for dragging my up to about mile 7, and everyone for making so much pain be so much fun.

Download of the Day

A tech blog called lifehacker was asking for input about panoramas and high-resolution images. I sent them a tip about a tool called Zoomify. They went ahead and made that their Download of the Day for April 15. They also included a link to my Lower Antelope Canyon shot. Fun! But, what about all of those tips they didn't use? Here you go:

Panorama creation that is free, automatic, but has no manual control:

• AutoStitch
  

If you are anal retentive (like me) and want a lot of manual
control, you can use a suite of software:

• PanoTools -- This does all the mathematical heavy-lifting. It
  is now a SorceForge project, but a good place to go for info and compiled .dll's is Jim Watters' PanoTools Page.
  
• hugin -- This is a GUI front-end for PanoTools.
  
• AutoPano -- A helper application for hugin that automatically finds all of the common "control points" between the images.
  
• Enblend -- An application that does an exceptional job of blending images together.
  

I use the commercial (but inexpensive) PTAssembler in place of
hugin.

Living in Limbo

I hear it all the time. At least a dozen times a day. The big issue is, I have no response. Over and over and over.

"So, when are you leaving?"

I wish I knew. Right now I am at the mercy of the Turkish government. We are currently waiting for our branch office authorization. Once we have that, I can then apply for a work visa.

Yes, there are theoretically people working on it. Pixelworks has a immigration attorney here in town who is using another attorney in Istanbul. All I keep hearing is "We're still waiting".

I'll let you all know as soon as I find out more.

Housekeeping

Just wanted to point people to something I use, as it may help them. If you are reading a number of blogs, a service like Bloglines might help. The service looks at all of the 'feeds' you have subscribed to and shows you all of the new posts. This way, you only need to go to one site to check everything, rather than going to each site in turn. To add my blog, set up an account, click the 'Add' button, then put http://billanderson.name in the 'Blog or Feed URL:' box. Bloglines will find my XML feed automatically, then you'll be done. Or, you could save yourself all that work and just click the 'Sub Bloglines' button at the bottom of the right column. Of course, adding just one site really doesn't change much for you, so here are a couple of sites you might also want to add:

Mariner enthusiasm and random Fleming thoughts - This is my good friend Josh Fleming's site. He talks about many a subject, including salami.
Nom de Plume - Sure, I haven't a clue what 'Nom de Plume' means, but it is the site of my friend Zia Munshi. She goes on about a lot of literary items, the status of her place, and wierd things that happen to her dog, which of course is named for a literary figure.

The rest of my feeds are geek feeds, so I'll spare you from those!

Father-Son Weekend

On the weekend of March 26th, my dad came by to see me. It was nice to see him before I headed out. We only had a couple brief days, but we made the most of it. He arrived Friday for lunch, and we went and toured the Eastbank Esplanade in Portland. A fun walk with lots of historical notes along the way.



That night, we met up with the Mills for a nice dinner at The Chart House. Great food and a good view of the Willamette Valley.

On a very wet Saturday, we headed down to the Evergreen Aviation Museum. They are the keepers of Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, which is receiving much renewed attention due to the recent movie "The Aviator". I wasn't expecting too much beyond the Spruce Goose when I went there, but they actually have a very fine collection of planes. I do recommend it if you happen to be in the area...

Navajo Time

Back in March, Kevin and I went on a trip down to Arizona to take part in the Slot Canyons and Monument Valley Tour with The Great American Photography Workshops.

To get out to Page required some doing. The closest Major airports are Las Vegas and Phoenix. We chose Las Vegas. Flying in we would have one night to see the city, and I would get another night before flying out. This seemed like a good idea as the last time I had been to Vegas was during the Great Family Road Trip when I was 14. Sure, I had visions of crazy times and debauchery, but that's not how it turned out. I think Kevin and I where the tamest guys there. I did manage to make $29 on Craps that night.

The next day, we headed out in our PT Cruiser. We chose the shortest route to get there and it took us right through Utah's Zion National Park. Not a bad way to go. The heavy rains made the normally dry park come alive with waterfalls. Quite fun.



That night, we arrived in Page, Arizona and the boot camp started. Up before dawn every morning and processing images late into the night. Quite the vacation. Some highlights were Antelope Canyon:



Monument Valley:



After the workshop, we went south and hit the Grand Canyon (another first for me) and went back to Las Vegas over the Hoover Dam. I finished out the trip by winning $141 on craps, getting two hours of sleep, then flying back to Portland and going right into work. Yahoo!

Pictures from the trip are here.
A high-resolution viewer of one of my mosaics is here.